Look deep into my eyes. Think to yourself,
"There is 'the fringéd curtain' where a play
Will shortly be enacted." Look deep down
Into the pupil. Think, "I am going to sleep."
The pupil has its many-tinctured curtain
Of moiré silks, parted to let you in,
And the play will present a goddess you used to know
From the glint of sunlit fountain, from beveled mirror,
A goddess, yes, but only a messenger
Whose message is the armorial fleur-de-lys
She carries in her right hand, signifying
The majesty of France, as handed down
From the royal house of Solomon and David:
Wisdom, music and valor gracefully joined
In trefoil heraldry. Nearly asleep,
You settle down for a full-scale production
Of The Rainstorm in its grand entirety,
Which, greater than The Ring, lasts forty nights;
Everything huddled in one rocking stateroom,
A saving remnant, a life-raft-world in little.
Dream at your ease of the dark forests of spruce
Swaying in currents of green, gelatinous winds
Above which the classless zoo and zookeepers
Weather the testing and baptismal waters;
Dream of the long, undeviating gloom,
The unrelenting skies, the pounding wet
Through which a peak will thrust, a light, and over
The covenanted ark, an arc-en-ciel.